uctive system, which is at present exceedingly complex
and difficult to see in its entirety.

"Complex now, but how much simpler and more intelligibly organised may it
not become in another hundred thousand years? or in twenty thousand? For
man at present believes that his interest lies in that direction; he
spends an incalculable amount of labour and time and thought in making
machines breed always better and better; he has already succeeded in
effecting much that at one time appeared impossible, and there seem no
limits to the results of accumulated improvements if they are allowed to
descend with modification from generation to generation. It must always
be remembered that man's body is what it is through having been moulded
into its present shape by the chances and changes of many millions of
years, but that his organisation never advanced with anything like the
rapidity with which that of the machines is advancing. This is the most
alarming feature in the case, and I must be pardoned for insisting on it
so frequently."

CHAPTER XXV: THE MACHINES--concluded

Here followed a very long and untranslatable digression about the
different races and families of the then existing machines. The writer
attempted to support his theory by pointing out the similarities existing
between many machines of a widely different character, which served to
show descent from a common ancestor. He divided machines into their
genera, subgenera, species, varieties, subvarieties, and so forth. He
proved the existence of connecting links between machines that seemed to
have very little in common, and showed that many more such links had
existed, but had now perished. He pointed out tendencies to reversion,
and the presence of rudimentary organs which existed in many machines
feebly developed and perfectly useless, yet serving to mark descent from
an ancestor to whom the function was actually useful.

I left the translation of this part of the treatise, which, by the way,
was far longer than all that I have given here, for a later opportunity.
Unfortunately, I left Erewhon before I could return to the subject; and
though I saved my translation and other papers at the hazard of my life,
I was a obliged to sacrifice the original work. It went to my heart to
do so; but I thus gained ten minutes of invaluable time, without which
both Arowhena and myself must have certainly perished.

I remember one incident which bears upon this